That Feeling You're Feeling? It's Called Insta-Pity

You know it when you see it: A too blurry #tbt photo with a glare; an overly-duck-mouthed selfie; Kelvin.

"You know when you feel sorry for someone for having picked the wrong filter on Instagram? That's called Filter Pity," says Johannes Hoerning, an art curator and dealer based in Hong Kong. His group of friends coined the term after an artist uploaded a photo of philosopher Martin Heidegger's Being and Time with the 'Kelvin' filter, giving the masterwork a faux vintage "very Sundance 2003" feel. A no-no to say the least.

"Insta-pity is when someone, out of lack of innovation, wit, or audaciousness, picks the 'wrong' filter, accidently revealing a corny aspect of their highly constructed web personality," he explains. To Hoerning, the examples are varied: "When a straight guy's shirtless gym selfie unintentionally looks like Butt Magazine thanks to '1977'; that moment when 'Nashville' has bestowed your friend's selfie with a motherly domesticity reminiscent of pre-Internet era" he explains.

Today, our deeply curated digital selves are given identical yet limited tools. To that end, cover photos, profile pictures, comments, and even double taps have symbolic impact. So do filter choices. (Personally, I like 'Valencia' because it is almost realistic yet discreetly flattering. The message I like to give is, 'I look great and effortlessly so, because I'm brainy, not vain.')

That's why the Being and Time snafu was so outré. The wrong filter reminds us that Instagram—supposedly a tool of immediacy and reality—is deeply artificial, calculated, and reworked.

A truly overwrought effort can also provoke what one ELLE.com editor calls a "pity like"—when you give props where they aren't necessarily due out of fear that no one else will.

According to Hoerning, the "pity like" is a natural symptom of the platform's dearth of reactionary options. (After all, there isn't a way to indicate that you appreciate the effort but are purposefully withholding approval because the photo sucks.) "It's a whole new range of emotions thanks to Instagram," Heidegger says with a laugh.

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